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Budget Ireland 2012: There will be tears

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Budget Ireland 2012: There will be tears

The budget for 2012 will be announced on 05+06 December and the government is busy drip-feeding us with bits of information. The process is a bit of a joke or a smart-ish ploy. All is meant to be secret until budget day, but people would get outraged an be shocked and in panic if they found out all the bad news on budget day. So instead, we find out bits of news every day so that we can mentally prepare for the bad news. ‘Pre-framing’ in NLP terms!

Unfortunately the news on budget day will be seriously bad no matter how you look at it: VAT increase, household charges, social welfare cuts, increase in duty on petrol, higher motor taxes and many more increases in charges and reductions in services will cost all of us a LOT of money. The 06 Dec will bring a lot of tears!

UPDATE:
Surprisingly (or not after all the planted leaks in the weeks before) the budget wasn’t as shocking as initially expected. Yes, cuts and tax increases were part of it as expected, but we were all nicely prepared for bad news. Pre-framing works!!

Economy, Taxes, , ,

Banks vs the Government

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Banks vs the Government

In an unexpected move the European Central Bank (ECB) has reduced the interest rate last week from 1.5% down to 1.25%. (www.independent.ie/business/european/boost-for-mortgage-holders-as-ecb-cuts-interest-rates-2925263.html)

Since most banks in Ireland are now owned by the state, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny has warned the banks that laws could be introduced that would force the banks to pass on interest rate cuts if they don’t do that now. (www.independent.ie/national-news/pass-on-ecb-interest-rate-cut-kenny-warns-banks-2926680.html)
And what did most banks? They ignored the warning! I guess this “game” Bank vs Government resulted in a 1:0.

The AIB and the NIB have declared that they will not pass on the rate cuts, the ESB will pass them on and the Bank of Ireland has not made a statement yet, but there are expectations that they won’t pass on the cuts either. (www.rte.ie/news/2011/1109/mortgage-business.html)

Economy, Politics, , , ,

Thanks a lot, Amazon!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Thanks a lot, Amazon!

Last Sunday (07 Aug 2011), the European Data Centre of Amazon’s cloud computing service, which is based in Dublin, experienced an outage. This is something that shouldn’t happen, but it CAN happen. Data centres are usually protected against outages with separate power sources from the electricity supplier and with their own diesel generators etc, but problems can and do occur. It only gets a little odd if the stories don’t make sense.

Amazon claimed that lightning struck a transformer of the electricity supplier and then an explosion in this transformer had such a bad effect on the synchronisation of some services that Amazon’s services were unavailable for up to 48 hours.

Strangely, though, there was no lightning in Citywest on that day. And strangely the ESB doesn’t know anything about an explosion and a fire. And strangely other data centres in Citywest survived the power outage by switching over to their backup generators that made sure that their customers were not affected.

So what was Amazon on about? Maybe they really don’t have the full picture (reason for power outage) yet, but it is a little tall to claim that a lightning strike, an explosion and a fire was responsible if you don’t know. And why did Amazon’s generators not sort out the problem? …it seems like someone screwed up!

In this world where 100% availability is important, this is not ok to admit, though. We will survive! But the galling thing is that that wrong report about the unreliable and lightning affected power infrastructure in Dublin went around the world and attracted comments about the unsuitability of Ireland for services that need high reliability. NOT a good thing in economically difficult times and when serious inward investment is required in Ireland.

Thanks, Amazon, for your help! :-/

How the story was reported /based on information provided by Amazon) and then rapidly was picked up by online and offline media all around the world:
www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/07/lightning-in-dublin-knocks-amazon-microsoft-data-centers-offline/

The mysterious circumstances if you look into it further:

BT Ireland

Economy, , , ,
 
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